Employee Feedback – Are You Doing It Right?

Guess what? Your employees can’t read your mind. The only way for them to know for sure what you want them to do (and what you don’t want them to do) is for you to tell them. When you do it right, delivering employee feedback has many benefits. Teamwork improves, you gain more trust with your staff, and employee productivity soars.

5 Elements of Effective Employee Feedback

Follow these strategies for providing effective employee feedback.

Stay focused on tasks and actions. Feedback should never feel personal. If you say, “You’re not a team player” to an employee, they may feel attacked. If you say, “When you arrive late to your shift, it has a negative impact on the rest of the team,” you’re making the same point without getting personal. Always focus on how an employee’s actions – whether good or bad – impact your entire restaurant team.

Be clear. Your feedback to employees needs to provide them with specific information about what you want from them. If you just say, “your appetizer sales are too low,” for example, employees won’t understand what you expect of them. Instead, give employees specific info they can act on by saying something like, “Be sure to suggest appetizers to every table. Use the strategies you learned to assume the sale and give guests a choice.”

Confidential. Corrective feedback should always be done privately. Use one-on-one coaching to address poor performance and revisit goals. For positive feedback, celebrating publicly can be valuable to the team, but privately letting employees know how their performance impacts the restaurant’s success will carry more weight.

Mutual. If you’re going to dish out feedback, you need to be able to take it as well. In fact, you should be asking for it. For example, if you’ve delivering corrective feedback, ask the employee how you can help them improve. When praising employees, ask their opinion on how their behavior could serve as a model for others. Listen to their ideas and follow-through on any promises you make in return.

Timely. Whether good or bad, effective employee feedback must be given soon after the actions take place. Employees must be able to easily connect what they did with what you’re talking about.